List of diploma mills??

I'm looking for a listing of diploma/degree mills. Does anyone know if such a list exists?

 

The most complete list that I've ever seen is in Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning which can be purchased on the web from a number of places including this very forum. A much shorter list without much information for each entry is the second list on this web page.

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html

 

thanks

Thank!

 

Whilst Bill has pointed you in the direction for an example of an online listing, it is very important to understand that there is no global, overarching definition of what constitutes a degree/ diploma mill. I dedicated a chapter of my Masters thesis to searching for some sort of working typology, but clearly this area needs more work. I still ascribe to Levicoff's argument that degree mills and diploma mills are two different animals, whilst I did note that Rich bundled the two together in his definition sections.

One day I will get around to publishing that section of my thesis on my website, but for the moment the PhD is the pressing project.

Cheers,

George

 

Diploma mill definition, lists

The Oregon definition, established by the commission for which I work, is this:

(11) "Diploma mill" or "degree mill" means an unaccredited school that meets any one of the following conditions.

(a) Issues degrees without requiring any student academic work.

(b) Issues degrees based solely on the student's life experience or portfolio without requiring any college-level work submitted to and evaluated by faculty with appropriate academic degrees from standard institutions.

(c) Issues degrees using more than 50 percent of required credits based on the student's life experience or portfolio.


This is a fairly new definition and we are still considering whether it works well. The main problem is that some degree suppliers have nominal work requirements that do not meet the standard for college-level work that undergoes genuine evaluation by qualified faculty.

Of course, Oregon could simply ignore the issue because ALL unaccredited degrees are illegal here unless we evaluate them, but there is considerable demand from the public for some finer distinctions. Americans - always wanting to rank things.

Although we are constrained by the wording of statute, we are always interested in ways of improving the way our definitions and classifications serve the public.

The state of Michigan also has a web-based list of unaccredited degree suppliers.

 

Re: thanks

The real question is did you see the institution you were interested in getting information on, was it in the list?

 

To use Bears' Guide effectively for this purpose, one needs to use both the "Diploma Mills" chapter -- which lists more than 400 -- and also the "Unaccredited schools" chapter, which includes several hundred schools, ranging from the quite decent ones to those that we regard to dreadful or dubious or nonwonderful or horrible (etc.), but are not willing to call diploma mills. Reading between the lines is a useful skill.